What Hurts the Most
by BB-Hodgela-slaudia-forever
Summary: She saw him in the future, but now all he can be is in the past. Based off the music video for the Rascal Flatts song
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is totally A/R. Both sets of parents are completely normal and ClauSon has been dating for about two years.

**What Hurts the Most**

The tears were streaming down her face faster than they ever had before. Her mother sat sadly on the teenagers bed while the girl's father stood, leaning against the back wall, the one closest to the door and farthest away from his now grieving daughter. The young girl opened one of her drawers, where he had kept some of his things; she threw them all over the place.

"Claudia, don't do this to yourself." Her mother warned, in a whisper.

The girl finally looked up into the mirror and saw her father standing there. Her face was contorted with the anger only she could portray. She was so angry and so filled with sadness that the anger had to be taken out on someone. She charged at her father, making him hit the wall.

"You did this! You made him leave."

She pounded her fists into his chest, harder and harder; faster and faster. Her father wrapped her arms around the young girl, trying so desperately to just get his daughter to break down. Her sobs were becoming louder and closer together, but she kept trying to punch him. She wanted everything to just disappear.

"I hate you! Say it! Say it! You hated him! Admit you hated him!" She screamed.

She started to collapse into her father's arms, wanting comfort from Sonny, but she had to settle.

"You……made…..him…leave." Her sobs broke apart her words.

Both the girl and the father sat on the ground. Anthony tried to keep his composure for his little girl, but he too felt the tears wet his eyes. Domenica started to cry along with her daughter, for all the pain her daughter felt and would be subjected to for the rest of her life.

* * *

She sat in her bed that night, her parents had finally left her side to go to their own bed. The tears were streaming down her face and she couldn't control it. The rain was beating on the roof, just like it had the night Sonny had died. She wondered if their would ever be another sunny day now that he was gone. How could there be? There wasn't an instant in time that night where she couldn't picture him climbing in her room from her window like he had done so many other times. Those nights he would just hold her close to his body. She would fall asleep a tangled mess, in his arms.

_It was going to storm_ _that night, so they ran through the field and went to a little tree house that was built in the middle of it. They sat there and felt the rain hit their skin. They both leaned in halfway and kissed each other gently. When the storm stopped, they ran to his beat up car and laid on the hood looking for the rainbow….._

Her mother walked into her room breaking her free of her thoughts. She gave her sixteen year old a sympathetic look.

"Claudia, get to bed, please."

Claudia nodded, even though it wasn't going to happen. She barely had blinked in the last two days, because every time she did, she saw Sonny. Domenica walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. Claudia went back to another memory.

_They sat in his car, his arm wrapped around her. She looked like she was in deep thought, but also he thought she looked upset._

"_What's wrong? Is it your dad?"_

"_No, not him."_

_She shifted herself, and leaned into him a bit. Her eyes never left his and vice versa._

"_Do you ever think of the future?" He nodded. "What do you see?"_

"_What do you see?" He asked jokingly._

"_Sonny, I'm serious." Their eyes locked._

_He looked toward the horizon in deep thought._

"_You. I see you." _

_She smiled at him and then kissed him, with more force. Then she giggled and smiled at him and ran from the car, going toward her house._

"_What do you see?!" He screamed seeing if she would answer._

* * *

All eyes wandered to the door as she walked in and took her seat in her first class. Next to her was the empty seat that Sonny's body would've filled. She could feel the tears but she willed them back, no way could she cry at school. One of her friends that sat behind her, rubbed her back to try and calm her.

_She was upset, her and father had just had another argument. He hugged her, tightly. That's all it took for her; to make her feel better, that's all he had to do. Just hold her close to him._

She couldn't do it, she felt him there. She took one more good hard look at his seat before getting up and running out of the class. Going to her car and driving home. Her foot pressed the gas pedal all the way down to the floor. _She couldn't do this._

* * *

Her tears were mixing with the contents of her stomach as she hunched over the toilet bowl. Her mother was outside of the door crying as well. Claudia's memories were overflowing her. They were taking her and destroying her. All she could think about was when she saw him last. Right before the accident, where he flipped his car too many times to live to tell the tale.

_The knock came on the door about fifteen minutes after he had left, maybe he had forgot to kiss her goodbye. That's what she figured at least when she opened the door. But it wasn't Sonny, it was a cop. He had a serious, but saddened look on his young face. He looked a lot like her boyfriend actually._

"_Are you Claudia Zacchara?" The cop asked._

"_Yes, sir." _

"_Sonny's parents sent me here. They thought you should know-"_

"_Know what?!"_

"_Sonny flipped his car driving home tonight and dies immediately. I'm sorry for your loss."_

She ran from the bathroom and out the door of her house. She ran down the street and practically collapsed before getting to her destination.

"_There it is!" She exclaimed_

"_It's almost as beautiful as you."_

"_I love you, Sonny."_

"_I love you too."_

She fell to her hands and knees as she hit her destination. The side of the road where he had died. A white, wooden cross stood there. More tears flooded through her eyes.

"I saw you." She nodded to herself. "I saw you."

She laid right next to cross and sobbed.

* * *

Should I continue or leave it as a one-shot? Give me your thoughts by pressing the review button ;)


	2. Three Years

It was a dark and rainy day, just like the day she lost him. It technically was that day, just three years later. There wasn't a day that she didn't remember him and think that he would knock on the door, but he never did. It didn't work that way. And after months of depression and her parents finding her at that small, wooden cross, Claudia had gotten better. She had moved on, something she knew he would want her to do. There were sometimes where she almost forgot what he looked like, but on her dresser there was a picture of him, with that same dimpled smile he always had with her.

The cemetery gave her the creeps and when she looked at Matt, walking beside her, she thought he looked creeped out, too. You can never truly tell with a two year old though. He looked at her with inquisitive eyes, wondering why they were here. She picked her little boy up and carried him to Sonny's grave. She remembered the day they put him in the ground and how she stood at the very back of the room, not wanting to be seen.

_Adela looked to around as they placed her son into the grave, that's when she saw her son's girlfriend, standing far away with tears streaming down her face. Adela opened a arm up to her and slowly Claudia walked over toward them._

"Okay, baby, this man was your daddy." Claudia told Matt, as the tears streamed down her face.

She set her son down and took a seat at the front of his grave. She traced his name with her pointer finger, then she traced his birthday. She had always refused to trace the day he died, because she still didn't…no she couldn't believe that he was gone. She pulled her son into her lap, when she saw how tired he was getting. Soon enough he was asleep and it was just Claudia and Sonny; how it had always been.

"You already know you have a son, but do you know that he looks exactly like you; in every way, shape, and form. He has the dimples you had when you used to laugh at something stupid I did. He laughs at me when I do something dumb, too."

She took a second to pause and wipe away her tears, so that they would not fall off her face and hit her baby boy.

"It's been three years Sonny, and I don't know how much more I can take without you. Your parents and I used to have dinner and sit down and chat when I was pregnant. But now we barely see each other, because when they look at me and our son all they can see is you. You always were egotistical bastard, and I say that with love, but why'd you have to go? I see you….everywhere."

Her sobs were starting to break apart her words, but she had to quiet herself. She stood up, with her son in her arms and looked at the tombstone.

"I've gotta go, baby. I love you….Sonny."

She ran as hard as she could to get away from the cemetery. She couldn't bare it, just like whenever she would pass that damn wooden cross. She broke down whenever she saw that thing. She walked into her house and saw her mom in the kitchen. Her dad was somewhere, but she didn't really care. She walked up the stairs with Matt in her arms. She opened the door to his room and laid him down in his crib. Her hand gently pushed some of his black hair out of his face. Three years ago, he had seemed like a sick prank that God was pulling on her; having her dead boyfriend's baby. It sounded bad and at some points it was.

"_Claudia, you're pregnant." The doctor confirmed._

_Claudia looked at her mom, tears threatened to spill._

"_He was the last…one." She barely got out._

"_Now, you'll always part of him."_

_The doctor decided to leave and give then some time to discuss things._

"_I don't want part of him, it'll just hurt more, mom. I can't feel this way forever. I need him mom, and he's not here and I can't do this without him."_

Looking down in the crib and seeing her son made everything worth it. Her pregnancy had been relatively easy until the labor part. It lasted for over thirty-six hours and at that point they had to do an emergency c-section just to save Matt's life. When Claudia was being wheeled to the OR, she saw a couple just being put into a room and broke down, sobs racked her body. Domenica understood her pain and tried to soothe her, but it didn't work so in the end the doctors had to give Claudia a sedative. She missed her son's birth, but luckily Anthony filmed it. Claudia took one more look at her son before leaving the room and letting him sleep in peace. Domenica and Anthony were in the living room when she made her way down the steps, her parents gave her a sympathetic look, like they had done for the past three years.

"How's my grandson?" Anthony asked.

"He's fine, he's too little to understand and besides it's not like he knew his dad. Sonny in a literal sense was just a sperm donor, but I'll never see it that way. But everyone else does."

"Honey, maybe you should stop taking Matt there. Who knows what that's doing to his mind." Her mother pointed out.

"Mom, Sonny was his daddy. I refuse to let the last part of his memory fade away especially from his son. This isn't easy for any of us, I get that. I get that both of you are sick of me mourning for him even though it's been three years, but it's not something I can shut down. I loved him with my entire heart and if you can't understand that I'll take Matt and we'll find a place of our own."

Both her parents stood up.

"Claudia Antonia Zacchara! We have been nothing but supportive throughout this whole ordeal. When you turned up pregnant, we made it your decision to keep it or not. When you decided you wanted to go to college, we paid for it and made sure Matt had someone to watch him. What more do you want from us?" Anthony asked his daughter.

"I want Sonny! What don't you get about that? I want my son's father back! I want the love of my life back. You can't give that to me and even if you could I doubt you would."

A cry from Matt's bedroom signaled the stop of the fight. Claudia made her way to the steps.

"I'm going to go out for a bit with Matt, you two can decide what you want to do when we're gone."

She ran up the steps and cuddled her little boy in her arms, soothing him like only a mother could. She kissed both of his dimpled cheeks, before putting a jacket and shoes back on him.

"You wanna go see Aunt Courtney? We made lunch plans, so we should get going. Shouldn't we?"

CZC-CZC-CZC-

Sonny's sister, Courtney, was already at the pizza place and had brought over a high chair and gotten an extra cheese pizza. She stood up when she saw Claudia walk through the doors. They hugged each other before sitting down at the table.

"You are a literal God-send right now." Claudia said in between bites of the pizza.

"Why? What happened?" Courtney asked as she cut Matt's pizza into bite size pieces.

"Well, you know what today is and they just don't understand why I take Matt to his grave every year. Or why I'm still grieving so much and we just came to blows about it. I swear if Matt hadn't started to cry my dad probably would've hit me."

"That's crazy, you loved my brother with everything you had and if possible he loved you even harder, you want Matt to know as much as possible about Sonny. It's not crazy, it just shows how much love you still have for my brother."

"God, Court, I adore you. You wanna go walk around, spend a little bit more time with your nephew."

"I'd love that."

Courtney picked Matt out of his high chair and carried him out of the pizza place. They started to walk around the downtown area and just window shopped.

"So how are your parents? I haven't seen them forever, once Matt was born…."

"They never take the day well, actually any day is generally a bad day. Sonny, he was going to be big, he was going to be someone and my parents just feel that loss everyday. I think after you had Matt it was just too much of a reminder of what they'll never get back."

"I don't blame them, seriously. If Matt wasn't my son, I don't know how much I could take of him. I mean he looks exactly like Sonny, since birth he's looked like Sonny…." She trailed off when she saw that Courtney wasn't paying any attention.

"Court?"

"Claudia, look."

Claudia followed her friend's gaze to a man, a man that looked exactly like Sonny. He was staring at them too. Claudia felt frozen in place, she couldn't move and she could barely breathe. What kind of game was God playing with her now? They started to walk closer to him and vice versa. Soon they only stood feet apart. Claudia was the first brave soul to ask.

"Sonny…? Is it you?"

When the man nodded, she felt her heart beat faster.

"It's me…Helena faked my death, I don't know why she took me, but she did."

Claudia shook her head.

"It can't." She looked at Courtney and Matt. "What's my biggest fear?" She asked him.

"Losing the ones you love, if it hasn't changed."

Tears welled up in her eyes.

"You're home, baby."

She launched herself into his arms, he held her close as they both cried. They loved each other with such a force it couldn't be explained. Finally they let one another go, laughing as they wiped away their tears. Courtney handed Claudia Matt before opening her arms up to her big brother. Promises and fears were mumbled in the hug. Sonny locked eyes with Matt, looking at him in confusion.

"Court, you had a baby?"

Courtney shook her head and Sonny took a better look at the child. Claudia cleared her throat.

"Sonny, I'd like you to meet your son: Matthew Sealey Corinthos."

She gently placed Matt in his arms, honestly she didn't know what he was going to do. To her delight, he started to rock back and forth with the little boy.

"I'm your daddy, Matt and I promise to never leave you again. Nothing with stop me from staying with you and your momma."

They walked home, the four of them in perfect happiness, when Claudia saw that her house was empty she decided that it would be good to go there for now. She was greedy and didn't want his parents to see him just yet.

"I think I'm gonna go home, give you three some time to yourselves." Courtney told them.

"Thanks Court." Claudia called out before walking in her house, Sonny trailing closely behind.

They all sat on the couch together, Matt cuddled in between his parents.

"How old is he?"

"Two, he'll be three in six and a half months. He usually talks all the time, but this day seems to confuse him because I get all emotional."

Sonny laughed to himself a little bit.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here for any of it. Are you mad at me?"

"How in the world could I be mad at you? You're back, Sonny. And I love you more than ever."

"I love you too."

CZC-CZC-CZC-CZC-CZC-CZC-

Random, I know. But I was looking through old word documents and found this unfinished(I hate unfinished things) so I decided to finish it. Hope you enjoyed!


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